Bank of America Announces Cleaner Coal Partnership With the Harvard University Center for the Environment

CHARLOTTE, N.C., Dec. 3 /PRNewswire/ — Bank of America today announced a
new partnership with the Harvard University Center for the Environment. The
collaboration, which includes a $1 million grant from the Bank of America
Charitable Foundation, will support the development of a Carbon Capture and
Storage (CCS) Action Plan. This collaboration is part of Bank of America’s
$20 billion, 10-year environmental initiative to address climate change
through lending, investing, the creation of new products and services,
operations and philanthropy.

“Bank of America is working with the Harvard Center for the Environment to
develop workable solutions to the long-term challenges of global climate
change,” said Anne Finucane, Chief Marketing Officer and Chair of Bank of
America’s Environmental Council. “Implementation of carbon capture and storage
is a critical component of an environmentally sustainable economy and future.
We hope this project will help expedite the development and adoption of this
important technology.”

A great challenge of this century is to develop secure, safe, clean, and
affordable sources of energy to power world economic growth for present and
future generations while protecting the environment from the impacts of global
climate change. To address this challenge, the Harvard University Center for
the Environment is leading the Climate Solutions Program — an
interdisciplinary faculty collaboration focusing its broad and deep
capabilities on the energy-climate challenge. Research teams convened under
this program are working together to find realistic paths to what climate
scientists have identified as the ultimate policy goal: an 80 percent
reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by mid-century.

Bank of America’s grant will support one important component of the
broader Climate Solutions Program — a project to develop a CCS Action Plan.
While carbon capture and storage may be the cornerstone of a future “climate
solution,” there are numerous obstacles and unanswered questions in the way of
any strategy for broad implementation including: how CCS systems will be
financed and to what extent state and federal government should be involved;
how long it will take for these systems to come on line; which current plants
should be retrofitted and what new infrastructure investments — e.g.,
pipelines, transport systems — will be required; and what key regulatory
regimes need to be developed to govern these activities.

The CCS Action Plan brings together experts from across Harvard University
with environmental leaders from industry, government and the nonprofit
community to address the economic, policy, technology and legal implications
of CCS. In addition to providing support, Bank of America will be providing an
intellectual contribution as a key participant in this stakeholder group.
Together, the team will assess scenarios for the broad implementation of CCS
systems, including the development of blueprints for various pathways to
wide-scale deployment. Results of the project will include a series of
publications that recommend specific policy alternatives. Work on this project
is already underway.

“Bank of America’s support will allow us to bring together expertise from
across many disciplines — including engineering, geology, economics,
business, law, and government — to develop a plan for implementation of CCS
at the scale needed to address our greenhouse gas reduction goals,” said
Daniel Schrag, PhD, Director, Harvard University Center for the Environment.
“Alongside energy efficiency and the expanded use of renewable energy, carbon
capture and storage will be an essential component of any national and
international strategy to protect the world from the most dangerous
consequences of global climate change.”

The grant will also support the continuation of three successful
environmental speaker series: “The Future of Energy,” “Biodiversity, Ecology
and Global Change,” and “Green Conversations.” These speaker series engage the
Harvard community and the public in a discussion of different choices and
strategies in confronting energy and environmental challenges.

Bank of America’s environmental initiatives provide critical financing to
encourage the development of environmentally sustainable products and
technologies; accelerate the deployment of existing technologies; and increase
energy efficiency. Results under these initiatives include investments in
solar and other renewable energy efforts at schools, municipalities and
businesses, and financing the preservation of redwood forests, among other
efforts. At the same time, the company has policies in place to discourage
financing projects that would destroy primary moist tropical rainforests,
certain endangered forests or companies involved in illegal logging.

Building on a long-standing tradition of investing in the communities it
serves, Bank of America will embark in 2009 on a new, ten-year goal to donate
$2 billion to nonprofit organizations engaged in improving the health and
vitality of their neighborhoods. Funded by Bank of America, the Bank of
America Charitable Foundation gave more than $200 million in 2007, making the
bank the most generous financial institution in the world and the second
largest donor of all U.S. corporations in cash contributions. Bank of America
approaches giving through a national strategy called “neighborhood excellence”
under which it works with local leaders to identify and meet the most pressing
needs of individual communities. Through Team Bank of America, bank associate
volunteers contributed more than 650,000 hours in 2007 to enhance the quality
of life in their communities nationwide. For more information about Bank of
America Corporate Philanthropy, please visit http://www.bankofamerica.com/foundation.

Harvard University Center for the Environment

The Harvard University Center for the Environment (HUCE) encourages
research and education about the environment and its many interactions with
human society. The Center draws its strength from faculty members and students
across the University who make up a remarkable intellectual community of
scholars, researchers, and teachers of diverse fields including chemistry,
earth and planetary sciences, engineering and applied sciences, biology,
public health and medicine, government, business, economics, religion, and the
law. The most pressing problems facing our natural environment are complex,
often requiring collaborative investigation by scholars versed in different
disciplines. By connecting scholars and practitioners from different
disciplines, the Center for the Environment seeks to raise the quality of
environmental research at Harvard and beyond.